


It's Still Happening

by skivvysupreme



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e03 Grilled Cheesus, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skivvysupreme/pseuds/skivvysupreme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With his father in the hospital, Kurt returns to their empty house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Still Happening

Kurt pulls his Navigator into the driveway at the side of his house and parks. He looks up at the house and all the windows are dark, with no movement behind them. It feels wrong being here, being away from his dad, and when the doctor said he didn’t know when he’d wake up, what Kurt chose to hear was, “Any minute now,” so what is he doing here? He keeps turning his phone between his fingers in his pocket, waiting for it to vibrate, and when it doesn’t, he runs his thumb over the embossed studs of his phone case like a worry stone. If he presses hard enough, he can feel the blood rush back into the tip of his thumb when he lets go, warm and pulsing and _there_.

Kurt grabs his messenger bag from the passenger seat and gets out of the car. The old oak tree in the front yard’s leaves rustle, but other than that, the street is quiet. Kurt lets himself into the house and shuts the door behind him. Silence greets him, and it’s so still and quiet that the absence is ringing in his ears.

His phone vibrates. He already knows, from the single buzz, that this is not going to be what he needs it to be, but he swipes the message open anyway and it brightens the foyer where he still has not flipped the light switch.

 **From Rachel:** Are you doing Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar for the assignment this week? I need to know so we don’t overlap. MAYBE we can duet if it’s Fiddler.

Kurt rolls his eyes and shoves his phone back into his pocket. Of course. In all the hubbub of his father having a heart attack and laying comatose at Lima Memorial Hospital, Kurt had forgotten to come  up with a Jesus-loving song for glee club. How silly of him. The bitter internal tirade jolts him a little, and he finally makes his way to the kitchen, turns on the light, and throws his bag onto the counter.

He stands there fuming for a moment, even envisions himself spitting the barb at his classmates’ stunned faces, until the ripple of collective shock that rolls across their imaginary figures reminds him: Rachel doesn’t know. None of them do.

Kurt pulls out his phone again and considers responding with the truth. He taps out, “None of the above,” and sends the text. He notes the time on his phone and thinks, _Deadliest Catch is on._

He walks into the living room and turns on the TV, and sure enough, it’s already on the Discovery Channel, waiting for his dad to drop onto the couch with a beer. Kurt watches without watching for a while, grateful for the noise, until a balding man in a dirty denim jacket and a baseball cap appears on screen. Kurt’s stomach clenches and he shuts the TV off, enclosing himself in silence again.

He’s hungry, or at least, he knows he needs to eat, so he goes back to the kitchen to prepare the dinner he had planned for tonight: a turkey burger on a whole wheat bun with a garden salad. This meal’s an old, practiced standby, and though Kurt doesn’t need to, he throws all his focus into it. By the time he’s finished, he has the two most perfectly grilled turkey burgers and the most beautiful, colorful salad with the most precisely-cut vegetables he’s ever made.

It’s not until Kurt pulls plates and silverware from the cabinets that he notices: he didn’t need to make two.

Kurt just stares at both burgers for a while, angry at himself for forgetting, because the result of his oversight makes for an even worse reminder. Then he places one of the finished burgers in a container in the fridge, bun and all, because the thought of completely dismantling the meticulously-stacked sandwich is too much.  The bread may not keep very well, but maybe his dad can eat it if he – when he wakes up and comes home tomorrow.

And the anger comes back, because his dad should have been eating like this all along, Kurt thinks. Heat’s collecting high in his cheeks. He stretches plastic wrap over the salad bowl, smoothing it as neatly and tightly closed as he can manage. Kurt has _told_ his dad, he’s done everything he can to take care of him, and still, his dad insists on devouring empty calories and eating Slim Jims for breakfast. Kurt _needs_ him to eat right, because it’s only them and Kurt’s running out of parents, and—

Kurt doesn’t recognize the noise that comes out of his throat at that thought, and he clamps a hand over his mouth. He feels tears streaming down his face, sees the droplets on the plastic over the salad bowl in front of him. Anger felt better than alternating numbness and fear, but now he just feels sick. He shudders, wraps his arms around himself and clutches tight, leaning against the counter farthest away from the food.

It’s always the worst-case scenario that ticks in the back of Kurt’s mind and leaves him more prepared for curveballs than his friends, because he never expects the world to work in his favor, but this… Kurt can’t prepare for this. He won’t. He starts to pace around the kitchen, picking at the fingernails on both hands, and raises his eyes to the ceiling, willing himself to stop crying. He’s not exactly shy about tears—not that there’s anyone to be shy around at the moment—but he’s scared he won’t be able to stop if he doesn’t get control now.

All Kurt can think about is the sinister potential of the situation, and how much he used to love the word _potential_ and its comforting presence in his life until he heard a nurse use it when she was going over the chart with the doctor. Either his dad gets better… or he doesn’t. Win or lose. Yes or no. The doctor had explained what happened, talked about an arrhythmia and his dad’s brain losing oxygen and _potential_ brain damage, but Kurt hadn’t understood any of it. None of it explained how his dad’s heart—always the most important part of him—was doing, so all Kurt had wanted to know, all that mattered, was, “Is he dead?”

Kurt’s phone vibrates where it sits next to his bag, and he jumps and freezes in his pacing. It’s loud against the silence and the granite countertop.

 _Brrrrrrzz_.

Once.

 _Brrrrrrzz_.

Twice…

 _Brrrrrrzz_.

On the third buzz, Kurt snatches up the phone, swipes, and presses it against his ear. “H-hello?” He sniffs and tries to make his voice steady. “Hello?”

No one answers, so he looks at the screen. It’s not a call. It’s Mercedes with a quick series of texts.

 **From Mercedes:** Shopping after school with tina tomorrow! Ur coming with us, riiiiight? :)  
 **From Mercedes:** Breadstix after?  
 **From Mercedes:** Btw did berry just txt u?? Wth is this fiddler nonsense

Kurt laughs, despite himself, but it pulls another sob out of him. He has school tomorrow. He has to show up and sit through classes and turn in homework he can’t even think about doing. He has to explain to Mercedes and Tina why he’s not going shopping with them or laughing at Rachel’s newest sweater, explain to Finn why Friday night dinner is off, and—

Oh, god. _Carole_. A surge of guilt rises thick in Kurt’s chest as he remembers that he forgot to call her. He tightens his grip on his phone because this needs to be done immediately, but… he resumes his pacing and rubs his thumb over the case again instead of pressing it to the screen to dial, as he reconsiders. Maybe Carole hasn’t earned this yet.

That’s not fair, he thinks. He knows that’s not fair, knows it’s just plain not true, really. Kurt brought her into their lives. Carole is more than he would’ve thought to ask for, and she loves his dad and makes him so happy, and not once has she tried to replace who they lost.

At that thought, Kurt’s pacing feet choose a direction. His turkey burger and salad remain on the counter as he makes his way out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

Kurt stands in the doorway to his dad’s room. Of course, it looks the same as it would any other day: the bed’s messy on the left side, yesterday’s flannel lays on the floor by the laundry hamper next to the dresser, and the curtains are open because he likes to greet the dawn. It ought to be neat when his dad gets back, so Kurt shuts the curtains and makes the bed. He arranges the few things on the dresser and sets a stick of Old Spice upright. He goes to put the shirt in the hamper, and he smells motor oil on his hands after he drops it inside. He holds his fingers as close to his nose as he can without touching it and just breathes for a few minutes.

When he turns to look at the room, though, everything is wrong. The room is _too_ neat – or, more accurately, not lived-in enough. Not for a room belonging to Burt Hummel. It looks like he hasn’t been there in days instead of hours, and maybe he won’t have been there for days by the time he returns to it, if he returns to it—and Kurt can’t breathe all of a sudden. He pulls the dirty flannel back out of the hamper and drops it on the floor. He rushes over to the bed and unfolds the covers on his dad’s side, then does the same on the already-neat side his dad never reclaimed from his mother. He goes to their old dresser and slaps the Old Spice back onto its side. Then he turns on the lamp on the nightstand and the room looks as it should.

Now everything is quiet again. Normally, when Kurt gets home to an empty house, it’s a blessing. He has space to think and re-energize himself after the chaos and abuse of any given day at McKinley. He knows his dad will be home later, so he savors the solitude and starts on dinner without interruption or complaints about low-sodium recipes. When his dad gets home, Kurt will already have filtered his day into a non-battered or slushied version that he can share at the dinner table. But this new silence feels too much like it did nine years ago.

Kurt stands at the dresser again. He pulls open all the drawers, not just the ones his mom’s things had been in, then lowers himself to the floor next to the dresser and lays on his back with his eyes closed. The oily flannel shirt is close enough to his head that he can smell that, too. He hasn’t done this in a long time, and he’d forgotten how comforting it was. He breathes in as deeply as he can, and hugs his arms around himself. His dad will smell like a hospital if—when, Kurt, _when_ —he gets to hug him again, but for now, he can pretend that he’s not completely alone.

Kurt falls asleep there, and it’s a little after 3 AM when he wakes up. He’s confused for a moment as he takes in his surroundings, but after he looks at the dresser he hurries to shut the drawers, not wanting to air the thing out completely. He checks his phone for the time, and as he notices that there aren’t any missed calls, he remembers: It’s still happening.


End file.
